August 20, 2018

Trump Fumes Over Reports White House Counsel Is Cooperating With Mueller

Meanwhile, Rudy Giuliani attempts to clean up his widely mocked “truth isn’t truth” debacle.

Ting Shen/ZUMA

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Continuing his stream of angry tweets from this weekend, President Donald Trump on Monday continued to reject reports that White House counsel Don McGahn has cooperated with special counsel Robert Mueller. Insisting that he had given McGahn full permission to sit down for interviews with investigators, Trump also accused Mueller, whom he branded “disgraced and discredited,” and his team of attempting to sway the upcoming midterm elections.

The president’s tweets were provoked by a New York Times report this weekend revealing that during his three separate interviews with the special counsel’s investigation, McGahn has opened up extensively, likely out of concern that Trump may be prepared to throw him under the bus should any potential obstruction charges be filed. Subsequent reports indicated that Trump’s lawyers have found themselves in the precarious position of not knowing the full extent of McGahn’s cooperation or what he has told Mueller.

With Trump’s legal team scrambling to rebut the reports, the president’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani on Sunday sparked widespread mockery for claiming “truth isn’t truth” while describing why he doesn’t believe Trump should sit down with Mueller. The former mayor of New York attempted to clarify his remarks on Monday with the following explanation:

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WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

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